Thanks to you two heros, dashing to my rescue
Since there is no virus protection on that machine <-ducks & hides from Simon>, this was not a factor. I was just in the middle of reformatting the drive to ntfs when I read Jeremy's post. Hurrah, it seems that we were both on the right track. I now have my external doing exactly what I bought it for :-)
Thanks again to both of you, I love a man in tights & a cape!